Three months into the new year, and already there are murmurs from website contributors wondering if music has gone off the boil, suggesting that this yearâ€™s crop of albums is not as good as last yearâ€™s was at this stage. By the end of March 2007, we had heard the new albums from Andy Palacio, Bassekou Kouyate, Vieux Farka Toure and Mayra Andrade, all of which are celebrated among the nominations of this yearâ€™s Awards for World Music.

My impression is that there are plenty of good tracks, but perhaps not many albums that hold up all the way through. This weekâ€™s programme was not designed to support any particular point of view, but as usual pulled itself into shape after the first track had been chosen, ending up as a mixture of brand new, belatedly discovered and ruefully remembered.

Leonardo Paniagua

â€˜Mi Secretoâ€™ by Leonardo Paniagua (does his last name mean bread and water?) is from a compilation of Bachata songs from Dominican Republic, the islandâ€™s country music that is less well known than the slicker urban meringue style. Drawn from the 1960s and 70s, I think, the various artists album rolls along nicely enough until this track jumps out to demand special attention.

DJ /Rupture

The album Special Gunpowder by DJ /Rupture has been sitting on the shelf set aside for albums that have been played once before and deserve a revisit before being filed away. Itâ€™s a shock sometimes to realise how long that wait can be, but something about â€˜Mi Secretoâ€™ took me back to listen again to â€˜Musquito (club foot mix)â€™ whose vocalist sounds like he might come form the Spanish Caribbean, although the sampled rhythmic loop is surely from Zimbabwe. DJ /Rupture himself is harder to pin down â€“ various references have him based in Madrid, Barcelona, New England and New York.

YaÃ«l NaÃ¯m

A song in English by YaÃ«l NaÃ¯m & David Donatien is being featured in TV ads for Appleâ€™s new wafer thin laptop, which has not only put her in the charts but drawn attention to the rest of her album, on which she also sings in French and Hebrew. An Israeli based in France, YaÃ«l and drummer/programmer/producer David Donatien are admirably adventurous in their arrangements, and their album may turn out to be one of the yearâ€™s highlights.

DJ Clickâ€™s name has been hovering the background for a while, often as a remixer shown in brackets after song titles. Flavour is not his first album, but the first Iâ€™ve paid attention to, and he turns out to be a rare DJ/producer with a distinctive style of his own who is respectful of the structures of songs and the contributions of his guest vocalists. Since recording this programme, Iâ€™ve learned that Leontina Vaduva is a bona fide Romanian opera singer â€“ exactly what she sounds like!

Umalali

Umalali: The Garifuna Womenâ€™s Project is the female parallel to Andy Palacioâ€™s album referred to above, and becomes all the more significant in the light of Andyâ€™s tragic early death at the age of 47. Producer IvÃ¡n DurÃ¡n scoured the Garifuna communities of Honduras and Guatemala as well as his homeland Belize in search of interesting female singers, most of them amateurs, who sing a mixture of traditional songs and their own compositions. IvÃ¡nâ€™s luxurious instrumental beds are endlessly satisfying.

I was delighted to hear some music from the Dominican Republic in last week's show.

Indeed bachata is to be preferred to merengue! Merengue was co-opted by the dictator Trujillo to pacify the people. Though still heard everywhere in the DR, it is not so interesting musically.

Bachata is the blues of the DR, and is having a huge renaissance. Bachata Roja is the classic disc, but do try some of the newer stars like Aventura, Frank Reyes, Monchy y Alexandra or Zacarias Ferreira.

Colin

----------------------------------------

2. Tarna Bacosca Cristian, Budapesta, Hungary

Pana cand nu te iubeam

DJ Click feat Leontina Vaduva

The title of the song is in romanian and the singer also romanian.

-----------------------------------------------------

3. Frank Nield, Kenilworth

I am a regular listener and have bought several of your compilations CDs. I have not been able to track down the song by Aynur which featured on the programme you did from WOMEX last year. Could you please include it, and the song by Leontina Vaduva "Pana cand nu te iubeam" from last week's programme, on a future compilation CD?